Re: [antitrust-policy] Key takeaways from genarea session at IETF 118

[John Levine <[e-mail]>]

It appears that Joel Halpern  <[e-mail]> said:
>> I don't know how to evaluate "potentially discriminatory" ...

>A WG creating a general policy that applies equally to all IPR 
>declarations (subject to all sorts of other constraints unrelated to 
>antitrust) is not discriminatory.  A set of people from a set of 
>companies deciding to oppose IPR from one participant (even if they make 
>that opposition public) appears to me to be discriminatory and from what 
>I understand poses significant risk of running afoul of antitrust / 
>competition regulation.

I'm confused too.  I would think a group saying "we all have cross licenses
so this is fine" would be potentially discriminatory since it excludes people
not in the group.

"We don't like your stuff" and/or "we don't like your license" so the
WG doesn't use it at all doesn't have that problem. (It better not or
we can't reject bad ideas.) I suppose it might be a problem if it then
leads to "so let's use the cross licensed thing instead", but this is
never going to be something where we can draw mechanical bright lines.

R's,
John